This Thing Called Irony
by uumiho
Summary: There was one thing that Tenten was sure of: Hyuuga Neji was not as big of a deal as the other girls in class made him out to be. /NejiTen-ISH?/ eta: Title changed because the old one sucked.


**Clamp of Irony**

_Ah, Irony, we meet again you cruel, sadistic bitch._

* * *

Tenten had never really gotten along with the other kunoichi-in-training. Despite her efforts to "play nicely," their personalities had never quite… meshed with hers.

"Oh, he's so gorgeous!" … Case and point.

The weapons enthusiast groaned, pitching another kunai at the target. "Guys, you're supposed to be practicing—"

"Tenten, shush!" She frowned, casting a withering look at the small cluster of girls, giggling and drooling over the boy several metres away, duly ignoring the outside world in favor of mechanically throwing an assortment of kunai and shuriken at the battered target. Hyuuga Neji, class prodigy, and christened by the female students as the "hottest guy _ever_." It was almost sickening. Personally, Tenten had never really got their obsession with the pale-eyed Hyuuga. He was just a boy, nothing all that special about him—aside from the whole genius thing. He was also a huge jerk and had absolutely _no_ interest in anything aside from his training. It was pathetic, really, how they drooled after him. It disgusted Tenten to see other girls acting so… girly.

The brunette let fly her last shuriken, grimacing when it only hit inside the third ring. Those silly girls were breaking her concentration! If they didn't stop boy-watching and start taking their training seriously, they'd never be good ninja.

_Ninja_ didn't spend their time obsessing over members of the male species who were _clearly_ uninterested in them.

She trotted over to the target to retrieve her weapons, making a mental reminder to acquire more of them in the near future. (You could never have too many weapons, after all.) On her way back she paused by the rest of the girls, briefly turning her gaze to rest upon the object of their affections. Tenten furrowed her brow, glaring hard at the Hyuuga, trying to somehow figure out why all the other girls adored him so much, and failing. "I don't see what's so good about him," she said sourly.

Neji must have heard her, because she saw him turn his head the slightest fraction of an inch to look at her. (She noticed such a small change because ninja paid attention to things like that.) He didn't offer any significant reaction—simply raised his eyebrows archly before turning back to his work. Apparently, the idea of someone not completely _adoring_ him was enough to merit at least a tiny fraction of his attention.

Idiot.

Tenten scowled, wrinkling her nose in vague disgust at the boy. She most _definitely_ did not get what they saw in him.

The girls, on the other hand, were suffering their own reaction to her words. They were all lost in a sea of whispers and horrified gasps, until the boldest one among them—the leader of the crew—rose her voice above the rest, clearly horrified. "_Tenten_. How can you _say_ something like that? Hyuuga Neji is like… the coolest boy in the whole village!"

"And he's so cute, too!" echoed one of the other girls.

She clucked her tongue, ignoring their blather momentarily to aim another kunai at the target. _I wonder if they realize that he can hear everything they're saying right now. _Pausing only to see where the projectile had landed, she shrugged passively. "He's okay."

They tittered disapprovingly. "Come _on_ Tenten," the one named Murano said. "You have to admit he's beautiful." Of all the girls, Murano was definitely the most tolerable, in Tenten's eyes. She was one of the top kunoichi in the class (though, not as good as Tenten, who currently ranked as the most skilled female of their batch) and was one of the few who actually took her training seriously. Sadly enough, despite her intelligence she was still not immune to the devilish wiles of Hyuuga-freaking-Neji.

But, as a comrade, Tenten valued her opinion as legit, due to her status in the class—you didn't _get_ to the top of your ninja schooling if you weren't at least _somewhat_ gifted—and so tried once again to deduce the big huge level of amazing that her classmate had. "I…" she began, and she could _feel_ their breath sucking in and holding in wait for her answer. (Why did they want her to love him so much, anyways? It was just more competition in the long run. Honestly.) Tenten sighed. "… Don't see it." The long whoosh of breath following her confession signified the girls' obviously disappointment.

"Wha—why—_How_?" stuttered the pack leader.

In the back of her mind, she remembered something she had heard one of the older girls from the village saying once. (She had been practicing her spying skills and was listening in on random villagers' conversations.) "He's not my type," she mimicked, not really knowing _exactly _what the term meant, but getting the gist of the implications.

She blinked owlishly. "So what _is_ your type?"

Tenten was at a loss. Somehow she had expected the other girls to be as clueless about terminology as she—they _were_ only eleven, after all—and finding out that they actually _knew_ what she was talking about came as a mild surprise for her. Of course, these were normal females, and Tenten was a tomboy who had grown up in a home with her father and brother—no female influence whatsoever. She wasn't exactly the definition of "normal."

But that still left her with a small collection of girls staring at her with a vague sense of amazement, in rapt contemplation of what her "type" could possibly be, if not Hyuuga Neji. Desperate, the brunette went to study him again, trying to keep her cool while deciding something that she could use to offer the girls as to why he wasn't her dream boy. "Er… his hair." There was a brief pause. "It's too long."

"_What?!_" Okay, apparently the freakishly long hair was a "thing" among them. Whatever.

Tenten nodded vigorously. "Yes. He looks so… girly. I like my guys actually looking like guys, y'know?" She was copying things she'd heard from the village teenagers again—as, being eleven and completely uninterested in romance, Tenten didn't have a preference at all, actually.

She didn't even care how long Neji's hair was.

Murano shook her head and sighed. "Give it up girls. She obviously doesn't know a good thing when she sees one." With that, the party took their leave, migrating over somewhere else—the flouncy ones to a spot on the side where they could drool in peace, and the more dedicated ones to their own respective targets and training areas to actually work.

Meanwhile, Tenten remained at her post—faithfully throwing and retrieving her small collection of weapons at the already horribly maimed target. At one point, she couldn't help but turning her head—just for a _few_ moments—to glare at the "beautiful" Hyuuga Neji. As if sensing unfamiliar eyes on him, he once again glanced her way, offering naught but the tiniest scowl for her interest.

Tenten scowled back, and this time, _she_ was the one to disdainfully look away from _him_.

Oh yeah. There was absolutely _no way_ she would _ever _be interested in a guy like him. No way at all.

* * *

**A/N:** You would cry if you knew how many things I have half-written that lie unfinished as I start new things. The count is somewhere six or seven. -coughs- Figured it might be nice to finish one for once. This has been sitting here for around a month, just FYI.

I tried to make my writing a little more childish, due to the age—as opposed to how I'd normally write for some of the more mature characters—like ShikaTema, for instance. (I swear a looot when writing ShikaTema… it's kind of sad, actually.) It was extremely hard to keep the swearing out of this, by the way. I nearly went into a fit when I had to put "silly" instead of "damned" and "jerk" instead of… something. –shakes fist- Anywho, yeah. I don't think it's my maiden attempt, but it certainly is the most recent attempt I've made in… years? So, I don't know if I overdid it or what. ;3 Concrit plz? --Judo


End file.
